


Communion of Saints

by rthstewart



Category: Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M, Fictional Religion & Theology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-01 15:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2777522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson<br/>Saints can find communion but may have to crawl over rough ground to get there.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mother and Son

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Parhelion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/gifts).



> The summary is gleaned from Parhelion's own lovely prompt, which states preferences for the gods and protagonists "trying to do well by doing good" and happy endings even if it takes "crawling across rough ground to get there."
> 
> A huge thanks to [Heliopause](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliopause/profile) for the beta.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If Umegat's tutelage had not sharpened my perceptions over the years, I should merely have thought myself unusually lucky in my profession."  
> The Curse of Chalion, Chapter 18.

Mother and Son

"Clara!"

The confused dream slithered away and disappeared into a fog of green, white, smothering black, and an echo of her mother's voice.

Clara prised open her eyes.

"It's nearly dawn! You have to get up!"

The door to her cell swung open with a bang. Acolyte Ines stood at threshold; the candle she held shed a very unwelcome light.

"Go away," Clara grumbled. If she rolled over and pulled the blanket over her head, perhaps she would be able to capture the dream that had been stalking her the last month.

Ines, though, was as persistent as biting flies. Clara yelped as she felt her blanket yanked away and frigid air slapping her neck and feet. The Father's Winter had not yet fully given way to the Daughter's Spring. It had been a dark and bitterly cold trudge back to the Mother's House and the streets of Cardegoss were still slick with ice.

Ines set down her candle on the press and poured water into the basin.  Judging from the faint wisps rising from the ewer, the water was even warm.

At least she hoped those mists were steam. Clara blinked blearily. _Steam,_ she decided, and not those odd gray blobs that would follow her in some homes and every time she drew too close to the awful Zangre.

A murmur of voices chanting scales drifted down the corridor and into her room. The Mother's singers were already warming up and Clara could hear her own absence from the altos in the flat, off-key notes.

"The Choir Mistress sent me," Ines said, sounding as brassy as the choir. "You are needed, obviously."

Clara pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the cot and felt the fatigue in every aching bone. "I only just came back from a birthing. I couldn't have been asleep more than an hour," she muttered through an ear-splitting yawn.

Ines wrinkled her nose. "Yes, I can see and smell that. Was it at least to a good end?"

 _That depended upon one's perspective_.

"Mother be praised, yes," Clara replied instead. "The cord was wrapped around the babe's neck. But all ended well." _For the mother and her daughter. For the moment._

Ines signed herself, forehead, lip, navel, and groin, then spread her fingers flat over her heart. "A good omen to this Daughter's Day! Surely there will be a rich purse for the Mother's House!"

"Surely," Clara replied dully, though she knew it would be otherwise. The Castillar dy Barbagoza and his lady hadn't been pleased when she'd shown up at the servants' backdoor of their town villa last night. But she had been watching the young cook in the house closely throughout her pregnancy and had needed no summons to know when the girl's labor had begun. Like so many others that came into the world through her hands, this babe would undoubtedly be passed off to the Bastard's orphanage at first opportunity.

She didn't know where the instinct for birthing came from that warned of trouble before it had begun and encouraged when she did right. The insistent voice was so like that of her own mother, who had lain down upon her eleventh childbed and never risen from it. Clara had held her hand as she'd passed to the Mother.

She scrubbed her gritty eyes, dashing away the tears that had been coming too frequently lately. There were so many births in Cardegoss this season and, try as she might, she couldn't save them all. Written in her heart was every mother and child who had gone to the gods because she had arrived too late. To prevent those awful might-have-beens, she would persevere through the exhaustion and constant, wearying arguments with the other midwives and physicians over her unorthodox methods. 

"You need to hurry!" Ines said, turning about to leave. "And you need a wash. I even brought you warm water, so don't waste it!"

"Thank you for your charity, sister." Ines' seeming thoughtfulness in bringing the water was simple self-interest. They were usually next to one another in the Mother's choir and Ines didn't want to sit through the long Daughter's Day ceremonies to come with someone who reeked of blood and afterbirth.

Clara forced herself out of bed, quickly washed, shivered into someone's clean robe she filched from the laundry, and jogged to the choir for their last warmup. Her late, out-of-breath arrival merited the usual frown from the Choir Mistress and titters of disapproval from the other singers. Then, they all processed into the Temple just as dawn broke on a cold Daughter's Day. The acolytes, dedicats, and divines of the five gods all joined in prayer and then the solemn chant to greet the Lady's season of Spring.

_Farewell Father, now to the Lady,_  
 _Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds_  
 _Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste_  
 _Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls_  
 _Upon our winter land that praises thee._

The Archdivine himself extinguished the last fire burning in the Cardegoss Temple proper, a lonely candle flickering in the east window.

With all the hearths out until the maid who would play the Lady of Spring lit the Temple fire anew, it was a cold breakfast in the dining hall at the Mother's House. Then they would process back to the Temple for the rest of the Daughter's Day ceremonies.

There were the usual disdainful looks at her rustic table manners but Clara was too hungry to pretend to be ascetic and she wolfed down several hard biscuits softened with goat cheese and honey. She hated fasting and was relieved they didn't do it on Daughter's Day. Her gluttony always merited snide observations that she was dedicated to the wrong god. Given all the children she delivered who were destined for the Bastard's charity, maybe His order would have been a better fit. _Surely I am an out of season mistake to make a mess of so many things._

"Aren't you worried about eating so much you won't be able to sing?" Ines asked, while nibbling daintily on a piece of dried fruit.

"That's not your affair, and uncharitable besides," Mother Divine Juditz injected.  She nudged Ines with her hip. "Go make yourself useful, Acolyte, and leave us be."

Clara scooted over on the hard bench to make room for the Divine and helped herself to another biscuit from the platter on the table.

"The door warden complained to me of your late arrival.  I reminded him that the gods and not you control when a babe is born. Though, why did the Castillar not invite you to stay the night?" the Mother Divine asked.

"I wanted to come home," Clara fibbed. In truth, they had wanted her gone.

"I was not aware that the Castillara was with child?"

"No." Clara concentrated on eating and not looking at the Mother Divine.

"Might dy Barbagoza be sending a purse in gratitude to the Mother for seeing another babe safely delivered in his household?"

Clara shrugged. "Maybe." _Not if the Castillara has anything to say about it._

"I see." The Mother Divine's mouth set into a firm line. "So you just spent all night birthing another bastard?"

When saying anything would just make it worse, invoking one of the litanies could usually stop the criticism. "Praise the Mother of Summer, for She guides my hands," Clara intoned as piously as she could with a mouth full of biscuit.

The Divine took so long to answer, Clara paused in her very dedicated chewing. Mother Juditz was staring at her, squinting.

"Mother Divine?" Clara finally asked, washing down the last of the biscuit with cold cider.

"Yes, I think She does, for which her Son is undoubtedly grateful," Mother Juditz replied. "Report to my office after the service, Acolyte."

"But I should see to…"

"You shall attend upon me, Clara."

"Yes, Mother Divine."

Mother Juditz pivoted away from the bench, rose, and swept away in a swirl of green. Clara debated taking another hard roll. Surely the Mother Divine was going to scold her for working too hard, spending too much time saving foundlings at the expense of those who actually tithed to the Temple, sleeping too little, and making up the difference with too much food and tea.

She snatched another roll from the table and pretended to not hear the usual, " _Haven't you had enough_?" snickers. She was still eating when the Choir Mistress ordered them out. Clara dashed into her cell to pull on another pair of thick stockings and to line the pocket of the borrowed robes with wool. The wool caught on her sticky fingers but at least she was warmer.

She queued with the other singers on the slick cobbles of the cold Temple square and the Daughter's Day celebration began.

Given the length of the ceremony and who was attending, Clara strategically muscled her way into a hiding place behind a solid wall of altos. Let the others hope for notice by the Royals, Nobles, and Divines of Chalion. Blocked from view, Clara would not have to look upon Roya Orico and Royina Sara during the whole of the tediously long ceremony. The suffocating black cape that followed the Royals everywhere always left her with a headache and nausea. She'd long since stopped asking if anyone else could see the choking black thing as everyone just thought her _even_ _more_ odd.

She sensed the dark miasma roll into the Temple with the Royals and determinedly stared at the green robe in front of her as everyone of Cardegoss arrived to give the Lady of Spring her due and, not incidentally, the Temple its quarterly gifts.

"The Royina looks pale," Ines whispered. "Perhaps she is finally blessed with child."

There was a note of uplift in Ines' voice – she posed the question everyone in all of Chalion asked daily.

"Possibly," Clara whispered back, another lie, even though she spoke it in the Temple on the Daughter's Day. She knew – as surely as she had known the babe last night was slowly choking on her own cord and that the woman in the second row on the right was pregnant with twins – Royina Sara would never bear a child while that black abomination clung to her and the Roya. Clara carried a terrible guilt for feeling so profoundly grateful that she would never have to endure what all of Chalion desperately wished for – she would never be summoned to the Zangre to deliver a child. The Royals were barren, both of them.

Everyone held a collective breath as the girl playing the Lady of Spring tried to kindle the flame that would relight the Temple fire. Though Clara couldn't see the ceremony, the maid's hand sounded unsteady. There was a crack of flint and steel, _one, two, three_ times. Then, a relieved sigh swayed through the Temple as the spark caught.

When the Choir Mistress cued them for the hymn, Clara lifted her eyes to the ochre roof of the Temple and began to sing,

_Now that the winter's gone, the Father hath lost  
His snow-white robes; and now no more the frost…_

An overstatement, given the cold.

_But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,_  
 _And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth_  
 _Now do a lark of singing birds bring,_  
 _In triumph to the world, the youthful Spring:_  
 _The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array_  
 _Welcome the coming of the Daughter's Day…_

The ceiling swam and swirled, turning from red tile to green glass….

_I have heard you, daughter. My Son sends a guide in your darkness._

Clara blinked and felt a sharp, jabbing elbow to her ribs.

Ines was glaring at her; the Choir Mistress was frowning.

Had she dozed off? _Did I just sing that? What?_

Badly rattled and cheeks burning with shame, it took her two more stanzas before she could concentrate sufficiently to pick up the refrain again.

The hymn concluded and Clara looked wildly around, searching for the voice that was surely her own mother's. Her eyes swept by the roiling black fog that engulfed the Roya and Royina as they knelt before the Lady of Spring's avatar to deliver the Royacy's gifts to the Temple. Chancellor dy Jiornal and the rest of his clan came thereafter, followed by all of Cardegoss.

Clara's eyes slid to where the Divines stood and saw Mother Divine Juditz. The Divine's mouth was hanging open in what looked like shock.

ooOOoo

Too many hours later, the Quarter-gifting concluded, and they were finally able to process out. Her head was pounding so, Clara barely mouthed the words of the recessional.

The usual berating for her carelessness and absence of mind began the moment they stepped out of the Temple.  The Choir Mistress, Ines, and the other altos all vented their displeasure and disappointment.

"Mother forgive me," she muttered and hurried away to the privacy of her room for a good cry. She'd just fallen into her bed when Mother Juditz intruded.

"You were supposed to come to see me, Clara."

The mindless apologies and little prevarications and evasions rolled off her tongue. "I'm sorry, Mother Divine. I don't know what came over me. I'm very tired. It was a daydream. I shall endeavor to do better. Of course, I shall clean the privies as penance…"

Mother Juditz clucked a sound of disapproval with her tongue. "You've become too adept at lying, Clara. I don't like it." She gestured to the door. "Wipe your nose and follow me. There is someone I wish for you to meet."

She felt marginally better as she followed Mother Juditz down the hall and up the stairs. The Divine was snapping at the acolytes and dedicats to stop gawking and get to work. She singled out Ines for the special privilege of cleaning the privies.

As they approached the Mother Divine's office, Clara felt an inexplicable force drawing her closer on a swell of inexplicable joy. 

"Clara?"

"Nothing," she lied. Something strange and exciting was calling to her from beyond the door and she was impatient to greet it.

Mother Divine clucked again, sounding like a very critical hen. "I do hope this is a habit you unlearn." She pushed open the door.

Clara pulled up short, gasping in surprise, and then stumbled into the room when the Mother Divine gave her an ungentle shove. "Go on now. No dawdling. And no lying!"

She beheld a being who shined with a light so pure it made her heart ache. She had to turn her head aside to avoid the blinding, wondrous glare and, only then, secondarily, did she perceive the mundane. He was a man, a very strange man, older, Roknari in appearance, but in rough clothing.

"Learned?" the Mother Divine said.

"You perceived correctly," the man said, speaking beautifully accented Ibran.

"Eh. I thought so. Stupid of me not to see it sooner."

"See what?" Clara stammered. She couldn't tear her eyes away from … the Learned? So he was a Divine, but dressed as a common servant?

"Clara, this is Learned Umegat, recently come to Cardegoss on Temple business, of which I suspect you know far more of than you've let on, so credit to you for discretion."

And then, incredibly, the Mother Divine gave the five-fold sign of the gods and bowed, low, in humble obeisance, first to the Divine, and then to Clara herself! "The Mother's Order of Cardegoss is at your service as the gods will, as surely they do. I shall leave you both for now."

"Mother Divine?"

"Your Temple oaths remain, my daughter, but I recognize when I, when indeed _we all_ , must cede to a higher authority. Praise the Mother of Summer, for She guides your hands. I'll see you are not impeded again. The Divine will explain."

Mother Divine Juditz backed carefully out the door and shut it.

Learned Umegat took her hand. His touch tingled all the way up her arm and she felt from him a sense of sympathy and understanding she'd not experienced since the night of her mother's passing.

"Who are you that Mother Divine treats you so? _What_ are you?"

"Our Mother and her Son, the Bastard, are well-pleased with your service, Clara. I am sent on their behalf."

She raised her trembling hand to Umegat's frosted temple. A green spark flared between them and a scent of sweet summer grass filled her senses. "Our… Mother? To _me_?"

He nodded. "One who gives as you do to those loved so well by both our gods should not labor alone, unknowing and blind in the darkness.  You have called and I am here." 

Clara buried her face in her hands and wept.

* * *

 

Poems are adaptations from excerpted work by Thomas Carew and William Blake

* * *

 


	2. Father and Daughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cazaril realized he wanted nothing so much as to take Paginine aside to talk shop. How do you deal with these matters?  
> ...Paginine's bitter smile told all. Cazaril wanted to go get drunk with him, and compare complaints.  
> The Curse of Chalion, Chapter 25

Though Cazaril had started to feel about horses on the road as he felt about boats on the sea, he was eager to leave Taryoon for Cardegoss. He hoped he wouldn't be paying later for the impatience now.

Palli was busy assembling the troop for their return with an alacrity utterly counter to his meager protests that Cazaril was too early in his convalescence to travel. Even so, Palli was taking no chances and it fell, once again, to Ferda and Foix to escort him to the home of the Honorable Paginine.  Cazaril made Foix carry the wine.

Saint Paginine lived in central Taryoon, near the Municipal Courts. The home was modest in size, but by no means poor, and well-appointed with an ornate front door, thick carpets, and sturdy, if impersonal, furnishings. The judge welcomed them all and directed Ferda and Foix to the kitchens and the company of the house cook and her husband.

Now that Cazaril was stripped of his inner eye, Paginine no longer glowed with the gray light of the Father's hand and blessing. However, Cazaril did not think it pure fancy that Paginine's middle-aged body seemed to hold far more than an honorable petty judge.

The saints, current and former, adjourned to a warm, pleasant office. The shelves were crammed with books, papers, treatises on law, and the stuff of a judge's work. The theology, Ordol, _The Fivefold Pathway_ , and other texts, were neatly arranged on a shelf, closer to the desk chair than the _Consolidated Laws of the Royacy of Chalion_. A decanter of liquor and a cup were within reach of the desk chair, further away than the theology, but closer than the laws.

Cazaril gratefully sank into one of the comfortably padded chairs. He liked cushioned chairs far more than horses or boats.

"You are weary, my Lord? Are you certain you can manage the ride to Cardegoss?"

"The Lady has spared me three times – four, if we count the fever I should have taken from dy Jiornal's sword to the gut. I don't _think_ She will lift her hand now only to have me die on the road before I see Iselle and Bergon enthroned."

"Twenty years ago, I would have warned you to not tempt the gods." Paginine studied the bottle Cazaril had brought, popped the cork expertly with his thumb, and splashed wine into two waiting glasses.

Settling in the chair across from Cazaril's own, Paginine added, "Today, I merely observe that the line between faith and folly is one you shall walk daily. The Lady values Her tool and so you should value yourself accordingly."

"But an old, rusted, dented tool, surely?"

"That can still be sharpened anew and used in Her labors, Lord Cazaril."

To that end, Cazaril took the offered glass knowing that he should be, and would be, moderate. How _did_ you trust in the gods without tempting Them?

"Saint Umegat of Cardegoss says that drink is a common affliction among saints."

Paginine's smile was knowing and thin. He raised his glass in salute and took hefty swallows to Cazaril's own small sip.

"You know my story. What of yours, Paginine? How long have you been afflicted?"

"Over twenty years, but not for all that time." Paginine let out a long sigh and stared at the warm, bright candles flickering on his desk. "I was pious enough, in a rote sort of way, but the Father's call was never something I had sought or even seriously considered. Though not as violent as your own experience, neither was it gentle. It was as if I was a schoolboy at the town's Temple academy and the Headmaster laying a switch across my palm for sloth."

"As the farmer drives his mule."

"Just so." Paginine took another deep drink of his wine. "I understand better now what the gods look for and what They need from those of us called to do Their work."

"The empty and open soul that They might fill us," Cazaril replied.

"I was empty enough, to be sure.  There was nothing save the harsh certainty of my self-righteous judgments." Paginine reached for the bottle and poured more wine into his glass. "My Father appeared to me, touched my brow, and so was I exposed and stripped bare."

Surely, the detached, ironic tone Paginine managed now had only come at great cost.

"The god opened my eyes so I might behold the true vision of myself. And _that_ realization _hurt_."  Paginine drank again. 

The paradox of Sight was another question Cazaril would have to ponder when he could drink to the point of staggering blindness again. To see with the clarity of a god's eyes was both gift and curse.  The unfiltered view of one's own self was especially damning.

"Yet you have found a… balance?" Cazaril asked.

"Of a sort, yes."

"How?"

"You mean apart from drink?"  Paginine snorted at his own grim humor and continued, "Prayer can be valuable, though I am at the god's call, and not He at mine. That is just one of the many reasons why drink does help, to ease the frustration." Paginine raised his glass. "I console myself that the gods love us not just in spite of our flaws but because of them. I am valued even if I may not always see it myself."

"I'd question the Lady's decision to make me her saint but that does not seem useful," Cazaril admitted.

"No, it is not.  She sees the worth of you and it is churlish indeed to reject Her judgment in this."

Cazaril could think of one whose judgment _was_ very suspect.

"I wondered…"

Paginine leaned back in his chair, cradling his nearly empty glass between his fingers. "Yes? How might I serve you, Lord Cazaril?"

"Forgive my impertinence, but, as the Father's saint, are you married?"  It did not appear so. Paginine's home had all the trappings of a bachelor establishment and none of the hominess of a wife.

The judge smiled. "The Lady Betriz prompts this query?"

"I thought your gift was truth, Paginine, not matchmaking," Cazaril replied sourly. Stripped and laid bare, indeed.

"I need no second Sight to see what was plain to all."

'You look so smug, I suspect meddling of a higher order."

Paginine's mouth twitched but he did not deny the charge. "My wife lives with our daughter and her husband at our country home – an estate just off the road between here and Valenda. I live in town when hearing cases for the Chancellery."

Cazaril fiddled with his glass, took another sip, set it down, picked it up again.

"My lord, why not just ask me what you actually wish to discuss about yourself and the Lady Betriz?"

_Truth._

"I, well, I had thought it was all for naught. Youth would not wed the death I carried in my belly. And then the Lady spared me and now I suppose I… well, I don't know what I hope. Umegat said common lust was replaced with love of your god. But that doesn't answer the question. With the love of your god… is there… is there…" He floundered, not knowing how to ask what he wanted to know.

"Are you asking if there is room to love both the Lady of Spring and the Lady Betriz?"

Cazaril nodded, relieved for the question so succinctly posed even as he dreaded the answer.

"Lord Cazaril, a man who could open himself so wide that the Lady herself could reach through him to do Her work, such a man will never be quite the same, true, but neither will he ever be smaller. And the love between two people is as much the gods' delight as our love of Them. If the Lady Betriz does not mind sharing your love, I am certain that the Lady of Spring does not."

He let out a deep, relieved breath. "Thank you."

Obstacles remained, but there was hope as well in this Spring of renewal. He had no money or prospects, but surely Iselle would still need her private secretary. It had been enough for Betriz before; perhaps it would be enough still.

Paginine finished his glass. Cazaril got to the bottle first and poured him another, watching the saint closely and trying to read the suddenly weighty silence. "Truth is not my gift, as it is yours, Paginine, but there is more you wish to say?"

He nodded thoughtfully and Cazaril could see how the judge was carefully weighing his next words. He felt suddenly wary, for the saint's mustering was reminding him poignantly of how Lady Ista had gathered herself before relating her tragedy to him.

"The first warning I offered, of taking care on your journey to Cardegoss, was in jest," Paginine finally began. " _This_ caution, however, is not and is one I comprehended only after I started down this road." The judge studied his drink and then slowly said, "I have been the Father's work for over twenty years, but not for all that time. I… I left him, for a while."

There was another pause so sadly heavy, Cazaril could already guess its import.

"I renounced my Father, after the death of my first wife."

Cazaril felt the weight of Paginine''s confession as a physical blow to the chest.  Paginine had suffered as Ista had, who felt the gods had betrayed her to murder and left her to face the curse alone. Umegat had never seen the blow coming that had robbed him of his Sight and his learning.

"I understand why that would be so, Paginine."

"It is well that you do. It is terrible, Cazaril, to know the power of our god, to love Him so well, to do His will, to be, as you would say, His dutiful mule whipped up and down those peaks and valleys. Once, just once, you go down on your knees and plead for Him to spare the one other thing you love in the world. And He does not."

Paginine drank his glass dry and, with a shaking hand, wiped away the moisture that had gathered on his face. "Love the Lady Betriz well. But there may come a day when you hate the Lady for it."

All the defeats, the betrayals, the torture, the galleys, the death in Fonsa's Tower, the death again at dy Jiornal's hand, and Cazaril knew all this pain would be but a bitter prelude to the cruel loss Paginine described. He had been hollowed out, like an old gourd, for love to fill him. To be so empty again was unthinkable.

His hands clawed around the glass and he drank, more than he should. Folly or faith? "I could not lose both, Paginine. I _couldn't_."

"As I eventually found. In my bereavement and anger over the loss of Lilian, there was, ultimately, no solace in shutting my heart to my god as well. The loss of one was bad enough; I could not live with neither in my life. But the price was very high."

Paginine finished the bottle. Cazaril talked him out of breaking into the decanter of oblivion wedged between theology and law. They slid from talk to hymns. Once the songs descended into ribaldry, Ferda, Foix, and Paginine's manservant appeared.

The honorable judge had to make his farewells propped up between the wall and his manservant, who seemed well-accustomed to the ritual.

"On your knees, Lord Caz!" Paginine cried. "I'm not so drunk I can't invoke a proper blessing."

Foix had to help him down to the floor.

Though he heard Paginine's voice, Cazaril had no doubt Who was speaking the rich words of hope.

_The gods shall ever guide your footsteps. You shall always be treasured and They shall bless your handiwork. Let Their promise soften the harshness of your road for you shall reach your destination in gladness and peace. May They grant you grace, kindness, and mercy in Their eyes and in the eyes of all who behold you._


	3. Brothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "—where were You then? Where were the gods the night Teidez died?"  
> "The Son of Autumn dispatched many men in answer to your prayers, sweet Ista. They turned aside upon their roads, and did not arrive. For he could not bend their wills, nor their steps. And so they scattered to the winds as leaves do." … "Now another prays, in despair as dark as yours. One as dear to me as Teidez was to my Brother of Autumn."  
> Paladin of Souls, Chapter 11

 

"So they've come all the way from Taryoon?"

"Yes, Royse. Only just arrived. Beetim was the huntsman for the Provincara in Valenda and then went into dy Baocia's service in Taryoon. The Royina Iselle knows him well, and my daughter. I don't know the nephew who came with him – but he's just a boy."

"Beetim knows so many in Cardegoss, yet asks to see me?"

"Yes, Royse," Ser dy Ferrej repeated.

With the Son's Day only a day away, Bergon did not have time to entertain petitioners. Iselle was still feeling poorly, which might be for good, Mother and Father willing, or for ill. Regardless, as Holy General of the Son's Order, most of the Day's ceremonial duties fell to him, and there were a great many of them.

But dy Ferrej would not have come to him directly, would not have bothered him, were it not something the man thought important. This meant it probably _was_ important and he must attend.

"Very well, dy Ferrej. Please escort them here."

The man hesitated, only for a moment, but it was enough. Bergon crossed his arms across his chest. "Before you do so, tell me what could possibly be concerning _to you_ about a trusted huntsman of your former household and his six-year old nephew making a claim upon our attention?"

"It's something Beetim said about the horses."

"Horses?" Now he was the one doing the repeating.

"Beetim was intending to take Raimun, that's the nephew, toward Valenda. Beetim told me the horses refused and made them come all the way to Cardegoss, instead."

Dy Ferrej paused meaningfully and Bergon ran a hand over his face.

Ibra had never been like this. There had been assassinations, revolts, sieges, untimely and tragic deaths, pirates, slavers, and intrigues, but Bergon had never known anything _uncanny_. Then, Caz re-entered his life and threw him in amongst curses, death magic, and multiple miracles on Daughter's Day.  And this was all before his mother-in-law assumed a new vocation as royal demon-eater and the cousin of his valued Marshal became a sorcerer. He _had_ asked Caz to teach him of foolishness that shined brighter than a Fox's gold. To wit, Lady Ista always warned you should be cautious in what you ask for, as the gods might just grant it.

Anyone in Ibra would have thought it merely balky horses on the road.

_Not in my Chalion family. And dy Ferrej has learned to heed the signs as well as I._

"Thank you for making note of it, dy Ferrej. Is Caz back yet?"

"No, Royse. I checked before disturbing you. He's expected this evening. Might I suggest asking the Dowager Royina to attend, if convenient for her? She is still at the Temple, taking her instruction with Learned Umegat."

Bergon nodded. "Please do so. Even without the involvement of the horses, Royina Ista should know they are here."

"And may already know," dy Ferrej added dryly.

In just the time that it took for a servant to deliver cakes, wine, and cider to Bergon's private office, dy Ferrej returned with Beetim and Raimun. Neither looked the least bit god-touched to his poor sight. Beetim was younger than he had expected, perhaps thirty, and exuded competence. He had, of course, been disarmed of his huntsman's knives, but the holsters upon his hip were worn and well-oiled. Surely the knives he usually carried would be bright, sharp, and cared for.

Raimun looked much like his uncle, with the same wiry energy and dark hair, eyes, and skin. They smelled of horse and travel.

Service in the old Provincara's Valenda home and in dy Baocia's palace thereafter had assured some courtly manners. Beetim bowed low. "Thank you for seeing us, Royse."

With a nudge from Beetim, the boy managed a proper bow. "M'Lord." Raimun reserved his gawking for the tray of cakes set out on the table under the window.

Bergon gestured to the pastries. "I'm sure you are hungry, Raimun. Please help yourself."

Raimun had enough restraint to glance at his uncle, who nodded his permission. The boy then bounced to the table. "Thank you, Royse, Sir!"

"Dy Ferrej said you wished to see me, Beetim?"

"Yes, Royse. I'm sorry to bother you, 'specially on the eve of the Son's Day. But after everything, I was going to heed it this time."

Beetim was beginning in the middle of a story that Bergon did not know. He glanced at dy Ferrej, but he appeared no wiser. "Could you explain more clearly? You seem to have the advantage of both of us."

"Yes, Sir, sorry, Sir. It's like this. About a month ago, my sister sent Raimun to me, hoping I could do something with him. She said he'd been dreaming and talking nonsense …"

"It's not nonsense," Raimun interrupted.

"I didn't say it was, boy," Beetim retorted sharply. "If it was, we wouldn't have ridden all the way here."

"Daisy and Copper made us do that, not me," Raimun countered.

"Daisy and Copper are the horses, Royse," dy Ferrej added helpfully.

"So I inferred. And what of these dreams?"

"Well, Royse," Beetim began and, again, Raimun interrupted.

"He told me the Royse should have a brother."

"Who told you that?" Bergon asked, though he suspected he knew the answer already and hoped that Ista would arrive soon.

Raimun shrugged and returned to his careful scrutiny of the pastry tray.

"That's what he says, Royse. He repeats, over and over, that the Royse should have a brother. Provincar dy Baocia sent me to the Archdivine in Taryoon."

"They both have some experience in these matters," Bergon said.  Dy Baocia's palace had become a shrine to the Daughter after the miracles that had occurred there on Her Day.  The Archdivine of Taryoon had been present in Caz's sick room during the retelling of the lifting of the curse, the cooking of dy Jiornal, and the exorcism of a death demon and a ghost from Caz's belly by sword-point.  The Archdivine had been supportive, thoroughly awed, and knew when to defer to others with greater expertise.   "The Archdivine referred you to the Father's saint in Taryoon?" 

Beetim nodded. "He wasn't in town, so we set off to see him, but Daisy and Copper were having none of it."

"Raimun?" Bergon had to ask twice as the boy was absorbed in his careful inspection of the pastries. The icings bore the grimy smudge of being poked with a probing finger.

"Yes, Royse?"

"I had but one brother and he died. You and I do not have the same father or mother.  How can it be then that we are brothers?"

They had to wait as Raimun finally selected a plump, creamy confection. "We aren't." He crammed the cake into mouth with a muffled, "Thwank you."

"But _I_ am the Royse."

The boy wiped the cream away from his mouth with his sleeve and grabbed a honey cake. " _He_ _said_ the Royse needed _an older_ brother, one who wouldn't try to kill him." The boy looked up from the dessert tray, very serious. "I promised Him I'd never do that. _Ever._ "

_My older brother tried to kill me…_

_Oh._

Elation and relief flooded through him. Bergon sent a quick prayer to all Five and signed himself, for who knew which or all might be responsible for this blessing!

"Well, what have we here?" Dowager Royina Ista and royal saint of the Bastard stood at the door.

"You're beautiful!" Raimun cried, more excited by Lady Ista than even the pastry tray. "How do you shine like that and not burn up?!"

"Practice." Lady Ista went down on her knees. "I have a secret I need to share with you." She held out her hand and Raimun bounded to her side. Bergon hoped Ista didn't mind getting sticky with cream cake. "What is your name, Master?"

"Raimun."

"Raimun, the secret I have to tell is that you shine, too."

He stared at his arms. "Why can't I see it? Am I white like you are?"

"No, you glow with rich brown and warm red, the colors of the Son of Autumn and this is the way He says that He loves you very much."

"Is He the one who has been telling me the Royse needs a big brother who won't try to kill him?"

Ista nodded solemnly.

Bergon stepped up and helped Ista rise from her crouch only to then have to jump to the side as Beetim stumbled forward and crashed to his knees before her.

"Forgive me, Royina!" Beetim cried.

Bergon exchanged a look with dy Ferrej who appeared equally confused. There had been nothing to account for how very distressed Beetim now was. 

Beetim pressed his lips to the Royina's hem. Ista abruptly yanked her white skirts away from his grasping hands.   "Beetim, what's gotten in to you? Stop groveling and get up! I can't talk to the top of your head."

The Royina was not as cryptic and brittle as she had once been but her blades were as sharp as ever and wielded with precision.

Beetim quickly gained his feet though his eyes remained downcast, like a beaten dog. He somehow seemed smaller than the diminutive saint, for all that he actually towered over her.

"What has you flapping about when you've obviously heeded the Son's call in bringing Raimun here?

"It's about Teidez, Royina."

Ista stiffened in unhappy surprise. "What of him?" she demanded.

"When Teidez and the Royesse were summoned to Cardegoss, I _knew_ I was supposed to go, too," Beetim blurted out.  His voice hiked higher.  "I _begged_ the Provincara to let me go with them but she said I was just jealous of dy Sanda and Lord Cazaril. I should have stood up to her. He'd killed that mother fox in the Daughter's Season and I searched and searched for the pups so they wouldn't starve, and couldn't find 'em. I burned the whiskers off the fox, gave her a proper burial, scraped up an offering to the Temple, I did everything I could, Royina, but I couldn't save him."

Ista stared at him. " _You_ were to have been Teidez's protector, as Cazaril was for my daughter."

Beetim nodded, looking absolutely miserable. "The Provincara had it all wrong, begging your pardon. She'd said the Lady Betriz was supposed to be the old hound paired with the young pup to teach her wisdom. But it wasn't supposed to be her and the Royesse. It was supposed to be me and Teidez."

Ista shook her head and sighed sadly, a sound full of regret and lingering pain. "You don't need my forgiveness, Beetim, but you have my sympathy because you will always carry this guilt. I bear _you_ no ill will for trying to move my mother. Even had you hosted a miracle, I doubt she would have understood or relented. For all her genuine piety, she was not a vessel for the gods. Good, truly, but also truly god-proof.  And I... I was the poor, mad woman locked in the tower and could not have aided you."  Her last words were laced with bitter self-reproach.

He bowed again before her. "My thanks, Royina, and I'm sorry. I loved him – Teidez was like a younger brother to me. When Raimun started going on about how every Royse needed an older brother who wouldn't try to kill him, I wasn't going to make the same mistake again.  I thought the Son was giving me a second chance.  The horses near dragged us here and only the gods could have given us so easy a trip."

"That is the part I do not understand," Ista replied. "Bergon, why is Raimun sent as your older brother?" Her face suddenly went vacant and slack; then, she scowled. "Bastard! He's scolding me for refusing a gift?"

Beetim looked shocked and signed himself; Bergon was accustomed to Ista's rantings at her god and too happy to care.

"Royina, I believe Raimun has been sent to assure that the _next_ Royse has the older brother and protector that the previous ones have not had."

Her eyes widened. "Iselle is…"

"So Raimun informs me."

Dy Ferrej sucked in a startled breath and made the five-fold sign. "Mother and Father be praised!"

"I suspect it's a family affair this time," Ista retorted.

Raimun had snuck back to the cakes during all the discussion and now looked up from his mouthful of sugar cake. "Are you done talking? Can I go see my brother now?"

"You won't actually be able to see the Royse yet, Raimun," Bergon said. "He's still growing inside the Royina Iselle."

Raumin rolled his eyes. "I know that. But he's waiting for me and He told me to."

"This is going to be confusing," Iselle said. She muttered _Bastard_ again under her breath and Bergon could not stop the laughter that burst from so full a heart.

"Beetim, I would be honored if you and Raimun would join me in the Son's Day processional and stand in my van tomorrow."

The man flushed and ducked his head. "Thank you, Royse."

"Ser Ferrej, why don't you see that Raimun and Beetim are settled in rooms near yours and their needs tended to? I need a few words with the Lady Ista and then we shall together introduce Raimun to his brother."

Dy Ferrej nodded. As they left, Raimun snatched a honeyed bun from the table and squeezed it into his pockets. "It's for the Royse," he explained.

Once the door closed, Ista swore again, as salty as any soldier. "Bastard!" she spat out. "My son died a god-forsaken death! He taunted me with it, _dared_ me to not turn aside from my calling as others had for Teidez. Finally, _finally_ the guide arrives and it is _years_ too late!"

She threw up her hands in disgust and Bergon quelled the urge to duck – Ista usually had control over the fullness of her powers but it was unwise to vex one who knew the way to the Bastard's hell, or to get in her way when she was vexed.

Bergon gently embraced his prickly, demon-eating, mother-in-law. This was a joyous day mingled with so much regret and pain. "It seems that your god and his good Brother have conspired to heal in the next generation wrongs visited upon us both."

Some of her sharp acidity turned softer and she raised a palm to his cheek. "I am sorry, Bergon, for this opening of your old wounds. You were betrayed just as Teidez was, and by your own brother."

He nodded into her palm. "And so, Royina, your grandson shall have the protector that your son did not."

"And your son, Royse, shall have the brother you did not."

"For that gift, we may both give thanks."

"Gift? More like a debt owed us both and _finally_ paid. You _Bastard_!"

Bergon took no offense.

ooOOoo


End file.
